Towards cyberpragmatics of mobile instant messaging

Francisco Yus University of Alicante, Spain

ABSTRACT Cyberpragmatics analyses Internet-mediated communication from a cognitive pragmatics, relevance- theoretic perspective. It focuses on inferential strategies that “addressee users” engage in while processing information located on the Net or the one exchanged with other users through this virtual medium. In this sense, the theory underlines the role that the interfaces play in the eventual (ir)relevant outcome of the acts of communication that take place on the Net. In this chapter, will sketch the main research issues that cyberpragmatics should address when studying mobile instant messaging applications (WhatsApp, WeChat, Snapchat...). As a theory grounded in cognitive pragmatics, cyberpragmatics aims at explaining how users make sense of messages when transmitted on the Net. However, in order to achieve that, an extension of analysis is proposed as necessary for this kind of mobile phone-mediated interaction, so as to cover not only propositional aspects of communication (i.. the relevance of the information exchanged), but also non-propositional constraints and effects associated with this kind of communication and which play a major role in the eventual (dis)satisfaction. New terminology will added to the general relevance-theoretic formula of positive cognitive effects vs. mental effort, opening up interesting paths for future research on why mobile-mediated interactions end up (ir)relevant to the users.

1. Cognitive pragmatics and cyberpragmatics

Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995, henceforth RT) claims that all human cognition is relevance-oriented, to the extent that all the stimuli that humans pay attention to are selected due to their potential interest, while many others are discarded due to their irrelevance. This general tendency to focus on potentially relevant inputs is covered by the cognitive principle of relevance: “Human beings are geared to the maximization of relevance”. With this evolved cognitive ability, humans are really good at minimising mental effort by selecting from context only the quantity and quality of information that is bound to aid in deriving relevant conclusions from any input. An example is provided in Yus (2011a) concerning a doctorate student that comes across a yellow Mercedes while walking on campus:

(1) New information (visual input): A yellow Mercedes is parked near our Department. (2) Information already available (from encyclopaedic knowledge): a. Professor Smith, who supervises my thesis, owns a yellow Mercedes. b. Professor Smith usually takes the bus to the university. c. Only when he intends to stay at university till late in the evening does he drive his car to university (since there are no late buses returning to where he lives). (3) (Relevant) conclusion (inferred by combining (1) and (2)): This evening I will be able to discuss with him at length how my thesis is progressing.

RT would claim that in a situation where (1) is processed, (3) would be relevant since it can only result from the combination of (1) and (2). A similar procedure also applies to linguistic communication (see below) and, as is claimed within cyberpragmatics, also to Internet-mediated communication. This cognitive principle is at work in the processing of any kind of stimulus, both verbal and visual (and also applies to one’s own thoughts in a specific situation, some of which are more likely to be entertained than others). However, RT is more interested in narrowing down this broad application of the cognitive principle to the specific analysis of verbal communication, as can deduce from the main objective of RT: “to identify underlying mechanisms, rooted in human psychology, which explain how humans communicate with one another” (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 32). Again, and included in the aforementioned cognitive principle, there is another principle but communication-centred: the communicative principle of relevance: “Every act of ostensive communication conveys the presumption of its own optimal relevance”. This presumption sets inferential strategies in motion in order to turn the schematic meaning of the words uttered by the speaker into a contextualised and meaningful proposition matching the intended interpretation. In order to accomplish this choice of interpretations, addressees invariably tend to choose the first interpretation that provides an optimal balance between the following two conditions (square brackets now added):

Condition a. An assumption [information, in plain words] is relevant to an individual to the extent that the positive cognitive effects [its interest, in plain words] achieved when it is optimally processed are large. Condition b. An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the [mental] effort required to achieve these positive cognitive effects is small.

Needless to say, to determine which is the first, most relevant interpretation depends enormously on context accessibility. According to the underdeterminacy thesis, all utterances communicate more information than the meaning that is literally coded, and the addressee has to use context to turn this schematic meaning into a fully contextualised and relevant interpretation. This applies to the explicit level of interpretation (explicatures), since addressees often have to engage in reference resolution (4a), disambiguation, resolution of the domain of quantifiers (4b), concept adjustment (4c), saturation of unarticulated constituents (4d), etc. And of course the gap between what is coded and what is meant and interpreted is even higher in the case of implicit communication (implicatures), which are inferred beyond the propositional information of the utterance with the aid of contextual information. In this way, that same utterance may convey utterly different implicatures when contextual support varies. An example is provided in Mike’s answer to John in (5). If John can access the intended contextual information (6a-c), he will derive the different implicatures (6a’-c’).

(4) a. I saw her there talking to Peter. I saw [whom?] [where?] talking to [whom?]. b. I’ got nothing to wear for the party. I’ve got nothing [elegant, classy] to wear for the party. c. John drinks too much. John drinks [alcohol] too much. d. She is a better candidate. She is a better candidate [than whom?] [for what?].

(5) John: Now, tell me, how’s your girlfriend? Mike: She’s no longer my girlfriend. (6) a. [Mike and his girlfriend have been preparing the wedding ceremony]. a’ Implicature: Mike and his girlfriend are now married. b.[A woman normally stops being a girlfriend when she splits up with her boyfriend]. b’ Implicature: Mike and his girlfriend have split up. c.[Mike’s girlfriend was suffering from terminal cancer]. c’ Implicature: Mike’s girlfriend has passed away. Cyberpragmatics (Yus 2001, 2010, 2011a, 2013) aims to apply these relevance-theoretic claims to the specific environment of Internet-mediated communication. One of the central aims is to determine why Internet users often resort to and find relevance in plain text-based communication even though several options with a higher level of contextualisation (video, sound) are also available in many interfaces used nowadays for Internet-mediated interactions. It also analyses how users fill the gap between what is coded and what is interpreted, and the role of technological aspects in the eventual assessment of relevance (cognitive effects vs. processing effort, as mentioned above). In this sense, it should be stressed that the inferential strategies used for interpreting discourses sent through the Net do not differ from the ones used in the interpretation of utterances in situations of physical co-presence. There is only one biologically rooted ability to obtain relevant interpretations, regardless of the type of utterance, the channel used, and the richness of contextual information. Similarly, users expect their virtual interlocutors to retrieve from context some specific information that will enable them to reach the intended interpretation of their messages. However, the characteristics of the different applications for Internet communication (chatrooms, Messenger, e-mail, Web pages, etc.) affect the quality and quantity of contextual information accessed by users, the mental effort devoted to interpretation, and the choice of an interpretation. In short, cyberpragmatics analyses exchanges that take place in all forms of Internet-mediated communication, and what we can label the “material qualities” of the interfaces (basically their position on the verbal-visual and oral-written scales in terms of options for contextualisation) will have an impact on the balance of cognitive effects (i.e., interest) and mental effort obtained during the relevance-seeking interpretation of these utterances.

2. SMS, IM and MIM

Mobile phone applications such as WhatsApp, Snapchat or WeChat, among many others, are initially intended to provide users with the possibility to send typed messages to friends or contacts. As such, they look as if they are actually an evolution of SMS communication, but in reality typing words on the screen is the only similarity with SMS, since they are closer to the instant messaging programs (IM) that were so popular several years ago, among them the once ubiquitous Messenger, now extinct. This is why these applications are generically labelled mobile instant messaging (henceforth MIM) and their options for communication are also higher. Among the qualities that these applications exhibit, we should underline the fact that MIM apps offer users a whole range of types of discourse that may be communicated. Apart from typed texts, users may send photos, audio files, videos, links to websites, information on physical location, etc. Lately, they have also incorporated the possibility of making free phone calls directly from the application. In any case, MIM is felt as quasi-conversational, more fluid than SMS. In Church and Oliveira (2013: 354), a user comments that “with WhatsApp maybe you type more, but the conversation is more fluid. You type a sentence and someone sends a sentence and then you type another one. I have the feeling that if it’s WhatsApp, it’s an open conversation. It is similar to if you were talking in person”. Besides, MIM is mainly meant to sustain communication with friends that the user knows already and with whom he/she already interacts in physical, face-to-face scenarios. Nevertheless, these applications have also proved essential to maintain contact with people who live far away, as in the case of students who interact with their parents when they are living abroad (Awan and Gaunlett 2013: 118). In general MIM is a clear example of the convergence (and clash) of increasingly virtualised physical settings for interactions and a growing physicalisation of virtual environments for interactions. Since communication has evolved towards a total hybridisation of physical-virtual scenarios in personal networks (Yus 2007), MIM allows for (mainly) synchronic text or audio file-based conversations that substitute physical interactions or complement them efficiently. As Ahad and Lim (2014: 190) summarise, MIM (specifically WhatsApp) allows for better accessibility and ease of communication offering real-time messaging, empowerment, sense of belongingness and sociability, enjoyment, quick information-sharing and cost benefits. It is commonly adopted for convenience in communication and because it saves money, and is also popular for entertainment purposes such as to share jokes or funny photos or audios. On the other hand, it is also used to ‘dwell’ with people in the virtual space, with effects such as a sense of group membership, as well as a secured and committed bond (see below). In fact, this kind of mediated text- or file-based interaction has become the norm, being now preferred to traditional phone calls. Indeed, very often users prefer exchanging texts or recorded audio files that resemble a phone conversation rather than engaging in an actual phone call. A possible explanation lies in the synchronous-asynchronous interface. SMS is typically asynchronous, although it can reproduce a quasi-synchronous conversation if the system manages to send the messages fast. On the other hand, MIM is typically synchronous, with long exchanges of conversations taking place between users, but it also possesses an asynchronous potential. Park and Sundar (2015: 122) point in the same direction when they comment that IM- sustained interactions tend to exhibit the classic features of informal face-to-face communications, being diplomatic, brief, dyadic and full of context. “The relative synchronicity of IM allows participants to determine one’s availability at very short notice and carry out communications with greater potential for immediacy behaviours that are known to engender a higher psychological sense of social presence”. Users may also prefer to send a typed message or an audio file, which provides the interlocutor with a certain freedom to reply any time they want, than an intrusive phone call that demands instant attention and participation by the interlocutor. Additionally, MIM may be more convenient than phone or face-to-face communication if the user has to coordinate actions with a number of people simultaneously. As Knop et al. (2016: 1078) correctly remark, as the number of interaction partners increases, it becomes more and more difficult to coordinate and communicate with each other in a face-to-face situation. Therefore, social groups might value the opportunity of communicating via MIM and receiving immediate feedback. IM and MIM also share the capability for notifications regarding who has contacted the user though these programs or applications, which is a nice example of the duality of intentions suggested within RT: the informative intention (the intention to inform the interlocutor of something) and the communicative intention (the intention to alert the interlocutor to this informative intention). With the latter, the speaker can effectively draw the interlocutor’s attention and direct it to his/her intentions. In this case, the stimulus acquires an ostensive quality. In this duality of intentions, linguistic communication is very useful because, whenever a person talks to us, we immediately identify at least his/her communicative intention. Similarly, IM generates pop-up windows on the taskbar that warn users of an in-coming message while, at the same time, a sound is heard; and MIM applications display a message on the mobile phone screen, alerting the user to an in-coming message. From a cyberpragmatic point of view, this “visual warning” is useful to stress the user’s communicative intention underlying his/her informative intention. However, it may also produce disturbances in the user’s task at hand, a negative non-intended non-propositional effect, as will be labelled below. In both IM and MIM, we can also find default messages available on the user’s profile, called away messages in IM and status messages in MIM. These are often personalised, and are available even when the user is not logged onto the system. Specifically, away messages are a useful tool for the management of interactive availability in a type of interaction where, as Bays (2010: 43) explains, “everything from the onscreen activity with its colours and mosaic of windows to the physical environment of the user who may be listening to music, talking on the phone or engaged in exogenous conversations are also important to forming the whole IM experience”. When the user personalises messages, very often they aim to call other users’ attention, for example with humorous quotes, or explaining in detail the reasons for being absent. An element that differentiates IM from MIM is the notification of contacts entering the system. In the former, the user is given an alert message informing of contacts’ connection to the program, which is normally absent in MIM. In the latter, users do have information about whether the user is online or not, which causes a lot of privacy issues and generates many misunderstandings concerning availability for conversation and willingness to reply to the user’s message. This effect has been accentuated by additional sources of information, as in the polemic “blue double check” in WhatsApp, which informs the user that the addressee has not only received the message, but also read it. Actually, users often disable these “currently online” and “double check” options for privacy and in order to prevent unwanted inferences. Besides, the management of multiple conversations is easier in IM than in MIM. In the former, the user can have multiple windows open with parallel conversations. In this case, the user has to monitor and follow, in a relevant manner, several conversational threads with different people and about different topics simultaneously, despite the effort-producing challenge that this involves. This multi-party activity is related to the social need to make it clear to other users (i.e. to obtain a mutual manifestness) that the user is connected and able to sustain several interactions, a signal of sociability and a source of prestige for other users. In fact, a third of the informants in Boneva et al. (2006) commented that one of the strong features of IM is, precisely, the possibility of carrying on multiple conversations simultaneously, what Garrett and Danziger (2007) call polychronic communication. This “strong feature” certainly demands extra cognitive resources and supplementary mental effort to maintain “interactive congruency” throughout all the conversations in these windows. By contrast, this kind of “multi-windows management” is more challenging in MIM. These applications do allow for multi-party conversations in groups, but in order to have multiple one-to-one conversations, the user has to return to the main chat area, where conversational partners are listed and resume conversations with the other users, which may turn out tiring and demanding, especially if the parallel interlocutors demand instant replies to their messages.

3. Basic cyberpragmatic research on MIM

In the same way that RT is interested in how addressees turn words into meaningful and contextualised interpretations that differ, to a greater or lesser extent, from the literal meaning encoded by these words, cyberpragmatics is also interested in how users make sense of the messages that they are sent through the Net. One central interest within cyberpragmatics is to determine the extent to which the interfaces used for Internet-mediated communication favour sufficient contextualisation so as to convey the users’ messages and their intended interpretations in a satisfactory (relevant) way. This entails analysing the texts themselves and whether (and how much) the interfaces allow for the communication of nonverbal information (in its vocal, visual or multimodal quality) which typically combines with verbal communication in order to guarantee a successful interpretive outcome. In parallel, it analyses why users tend to rely on cues-filtered, poorly contextualised forms of Internet communication when other more contextualised options are available even within the same app or program. Indeed, MIM users stick to plain text even though free phone calls or even video calls are also available from these apps. Apart from not willing to be intrusive when making a phone call, another reason why many MIM users shy away from direct face-to-face contact may be the challenge of controlling the interrelation of verbal and nonverbal information on the fly. The control that users have over other users’ impressions and interpretations may lead to a preference for text-based virtual conversations. The new developments in this type of mobile-mediated interactions, for example the introduction of phone calls, add a new dimension because users have to assess to what extent they are willing to let other users perceive their vocal and visual nonverbal behaviour (intentional or exuded) and which impressions they want to convey. Nowadays, despite these developments in MIM applications, many users still resort to (more secure) plain-text-based communication, except when interacting with close friends and relatives. Concerning the limitations imposed by the MIM interface upon effective communication and contextualisation, we can conclude that some of these are also found in chat rooms (Yus 2005, 2011a). Among others, the following can be listed: 1. In MIM, text-based conversational turns are subject to the sequencing imposed by the application that manages interactions. The imposed sequencing of utterances may have little to do with the intended sequence of turns, and this may lead to misunderstandings, especially in multi-party conversational groups. Besides, as Nilsen and Mäkitalo (2010: 92) comment, programs for text-based interactions -specifically chat rooms- are designed so that several persons can post messages simultaneously, which means that there is no competition for the floor since all messages sent off will be posted. 2. One of the most typical attributes of chat rooms is the juxtaposition of several conversational threads on the same screen. This may also be the found in MIM communication, but with variations. In chat rooms, unless the user is engaged in a private conversation with another user (in a different window), the norm is that all the messages arrive at the “central area” of the chat room, together with messages that the system creates automatically. By contrast, in MIM communication, one-to-one interactions are the norm, but there are also groups in which multiple threads of conversation may overlap without a clear linear arrangement. Even within the same conversation, the application may reproduce conversational threads in an unwanted order, and this quality might produce increased effort when following conversations that are mixed up without a clear arrangement, and affect the users’ eventual estimation of relevance. Consider the following MIM conversation that took place on February 7th, 2016 through WhatsApp between a female (A) and a male (B) user.

(7) A: La voy a facturar aeropuerto [I’m going to check her in at the airport]. B: Eso [That’s it]. A Egipto, que allí los idolatran [To Egypt, since they idolise them there]. A: Jaja a Marruecos pa q aprenda lo que vale un peine [Or to Morocco, so that she learns the tough way] Q está muy mimadita [because she’s too spoiled] B: Yeah A: Yastan aqui mis padres [My parents are here already] B: Que vea que la vida no solo hacer trastadas [She has to realise that life is not all about playing tricks around]. A: B: Ohhhh Planazo [Great plan] A: Total [Totally] B: iré al gym luego [I’ll go to the gym later] In this conversation, the initial topic is how angry A is with her naughty cat. Half-way through the conversation, A informs B that her parents have just arrived (Yastan aquí mis padres), but B’s next message is still related to the naughty cat, and the application has reproduced it in strict order of arrival to the system. Similarly, A’s next message, an emoji of anguish which codes a whole proposition (roughly “my parents’ visit depresses me”), does not refer to the cat either, but it follows B’s cat-related message. These mixed-up threads in MIM conversations may be a potential source of misunderstanding or of increased processing effort. Given the limitations that plain text messages exhibit when compared to face-to-face exchanges, one of the central areas of cyberpragmatic research focuses on the users’ ability to connote their messages with different attributes of orality, typically found in the vocal (e.g. repetition of letters and creative use of punctuation marks) and the visual (e.g. emoticons) channels of oral interactions (see Yus 2005, Bays 2008, and Maíz-Arévalo 2015, among others). Therefore, cyberpragmatics analyses the challenges that users face when they attempt to compensate for this lack of orality and nevertheless expect to communicate not only the right interpretation from verbal content, but also the whole range of feelings, emotions and impressions associated with this content that are also relevant and may alter drastically the eventual interpretation of the accompanying verbal input. Certainly, very often more effort has to be devoted to tracking down underlying intentions, feelings, and emotions conveyed by text-based utterances, and users rely on these connotative techniques of vocal and visual text deformation in order to lead the interlocutor in the right interpretive direction. Emoticons, now turned into fully iconic emoji, usually accompany verbal texts providing additional and relevant non-propositional information, and have become an inherent element in MIM communication. As summarised in Luor et al. (2010: 890), these iconic signs are indeed similar to non-verbal cues in face-to-face interactions, since they also help to accentuate or emphasise a tone or meaning during message creation and interpretation. Furthermore, they help to communicate more clearly a current mood or mental state of the user, also providing additional social cues about this person. Thus, emoticons serve the function of clarifying textual messages, which is similar to non-verbal displays in physical scenarios. However, emoticons or emoji may also appear with no accompanying text, usually typed for the sake of brevity and typing economy. MIM users are now accustomed to inferring propositional interpretations from sequences of emoji, often without accompanying text. In Yus (2011a), it was wrongly claimed that emoticons (and by extension emoji) mainly play the role of redundancy regarding the text to which they are attached, as in “I feel great today :-)”, in which the emoticon seems to add no further meaning to what is said verbally. However, emoji signs are typed with an expectation of relevance. Their readers are pushed into supplementary mental effort to determine the feeling or emotion that underlies the emoji and to work out its relationship to what has been typed verbally. This extra effort has to be offset with additional interest (cognitive effects). In this sense, Lo (2008) and Luor et al. (2010: 891) comment that when Internet users are faced with text without emoticons, most of them cannot perceive the correct emotion, attitude, and intent of the sender. On the contrary, the combination of visual cues and text does create a more positive attitude than text alone. Therefore, both emoticons and evolved iconic emojis do perform a number of substantial functions that are crucial to get the right interpretation of the text typed on the mobile phone keyboard. Huang et al. (2008: 466) also noticed that users exhibit more “enjoyment, personal interaction, perceived information richness, and perceived usefulness” when interacting in emoticon-laden virtual conversations. Several classifications of functions of emoticons have been proposed. For example, Xu et al. (2007) list three of them: to accentuate or emphasise a tone or meaning of the message, to establish the current mood or impression of the sender, and to make the otherwise completely textual conversation creative and visually-salient. By contrast, in Yus (2014a) up to eight of these functions were isolated, all of which are present in MIM text-based interactions. These will be briefly described and illustrated below. 1. To signal the propositional attitude that underlies the utterance and which would be difficult to identify without the aid of the emoji. Propositional attitudes are important for successful interactions, since they introduce an additional metarepresentational layer of information beyond the explicit content of the utterance. Speakers rely on a number of verbal elements to convey attitudes, including that-clauses introduced by an attitudinal verb, as in (8a), parenthetical clauses (8b), verbal moods (8c), illocutionary adverbials (8d), and evidentials (8e), among others:

(8) a. I regret that you failed your exam. b. It’s time to go, I guess. c. Come here right now! d. Frankly, I am not surprised. e. No doubt, he is the best candidate for the job.

Sometimes, though, the underlying attitude can only be derived from non-linguistic evidence, and this is where emojis may play a clarifying role. Consider (9):

(9) Yo no tengo tiempo de aburrirme, ni de leer :(( [I have no time to get bored, nor to read :((]. Que toquen en martes no nos facilita las cosas :,( [The fact that they are playing on a Tuesday, doesn’t make things easier :,(]. Aquí no hay fingers, y mira q los he buscado :-( [There are no fingers here, and I looked for them everywhere :-(].

In all of these cases, the user “regrets that p” (p being time to read, etc.), but the identification of this attitude is made possible with the aid of the emoji, otherwise the utterances could have been considered mere assertions. This use is similar to the one found in face-to-face interactions, where certain aspects of the speaker’s attitude are most often expressed through non-linguistic or paralinguistic cues. 2. To communicate a higher intensity of a propositional attitude which has already been coded verbally. In this case, the user does resort to a linguistic means to communicate the propositional attitude, and the emoji adds to the eventual relevance by adding an additional layer of intensity in the way this attitude is held, as in (10) below:

(10) Espero que siempre os acordéis de mis lecciones de español :-) [I hope you’ll always remember my Spanish lessons :-)].

3. To strengthen/mitigate the illocutionary force of a speech act. Emoji may also achieve relevance by enhancing or softening the illocutionary force of speech acts and thus communicate a more adequate extent of the impact that the user intends with his/her utterance. The mitigating function is usually more frequent than the strengthening one. Dresner and Herring (2010: 64-66) suggest these examples:

(11) a. I would like a non-circumventing solution ;-> b. I am very sensitive and cry easily, and gets even worse when i feel awful :)

In (11a), the winking emoticon indicates that the message should not be taken as a request or a demand, as its form (“I would like”) otherwise suggests. Instead, its function is to downgrade the utterance to a less face-threatening speech act, a simple assertion. In (11b), the emoticon mitigates what otherwise looks like a self-pitying list of complaints, suggesting that the interpretation is not that of complaining, but rather asserting or describing. 4. To contradict the explicit content of the utterance (a): Joking. An important role of emoji in MIM is to signal that the user should not be understood literally, that the underlying intention is to joke about some state of affairs, and therefore the propositional attitude is not that of endorsement but of humorous dissociation. The relevance of the emoji lies in its capability to direct the reader away from a literal interpretation of the utterance and, instead, to offer him/her interpretive reward in terms of generation of humorous effects. An example is (12):

(12) a. [Text commenting on a photo of a shop with the same name as the addressee user]. No sabía que tenías una tienda en Alicante :)))))) Besos... [I didn’t know you had a shop in Alicante :)))))). Kisses...].

5. To contradict the explicit content of the utterance (b): Irony. A similar case to joking, this time involving contradicting propositional content due to an ironic intention. The main difference with jokes is the explicit dissociative attitude that irony exhibits. Spotting this attitude as dissociative is essential to differentiate irony from the incongruity found in jokes. An example is (13):

(13) Que vida mas dura xD [What a hard life you lead xD].

6. To add a feeling or emotion towards the propositional content of the utterance (affective attitude towards the utterance). Emoji is very often used in MIM in order to convey feelings and emotions (and the affective attitudes attached to utterances), which are different from propositional attitudes, although the dividing line is often blurred (see Yus 2014a for examples of overlapping classifications). This sixth function refers to occurrences in which the user shows, with the aid of emojis, a certain feeling or emotion towards the content of the utterance. Examples include (14a-b):

(14) a. En Badajoz, nació sobrina :-) !!! [In Badajoz, my niece was born :-) !!!] b. El reencuentro se acercaaaaa :-) [The reunion is approaching :-)].

7. To add a feeling or emotion towards the communicative act (feeling or emotion in parallel to the communicative act). Sometimes, nonverbal behaviour has a more social connotation (the typical quality of phatic exchanges), in which the speakers show what the act of communicating or interacting as a whole is making them feel, and hence the nonverbal behaviour is produced in parallel to the verbal content, thereby connoting the communicative act, rather than only qualifying the propositional content being typed. This function is illustrated in (15a-b) in Yus (ibid.):

(15) User 1: que guapa!!!peazo fiestas que pegas, no paras!!!! :-) [How pretty!!! Some parties, uh! You never stop!!!! :-)]. User 2: La próxima t aviso a ver si te animas!!! :-) [Next time, I’ll give you the heads up in case you feel like coming!!! :-)]. In (15), user 2 is not using the emoticon because she is happy to let user 1 know about a future party, or happy to ask whether user 1 will be willing to go. Instead, she is showing the kind of nonverbal behaviour that is aroused by the fact that she is communicating with user 2, by the prospect of getting user 1 to join her in the party, and in general by the emotions that she feels while she is typing that message for user 1 (including a feeling of bonding or enhanced friendship), rather than towards the content of the message itself. Besides, the message needs inferencing so as to be turned into a fully propositional and relevant explicature. The development of user 2’s message would be as follows:

(16) a. Contextualised proposition (via inferential enrichment): Next time [that I go to a party] I’ll give you the heads up in case you feel like coming [there with me]. b. Proposition plus propositional attitude: [I inform you that / I promise you that] Next time [that I go to a party] I’ll give you the heads up in case you feel like coming [there with me]. c. Proposition plus propositional attitude plus affective attitude (towards the communicative act): [I am happy to tell you that*] [I inform you that / I promise you that] Next time [that I go to a party] I’ll give you the heads up in case you feel like coming [there with me] [and I insist on your coming with me**]. * Communicated by the emoticon. ** Communicated by the repetition of the exclamation mark.

8. To communicate the intensity of a feeling or emotion that has been coded verbally. Finally, emoji can also enhance the intensity of a feeling or emotion which has already been coded verbally in the message. Some examples are provided in (17), where the emotions conveyed by the words in italics are enhanced by the addition of an emoji (here replaced with a simpler emoticon for editing convenience):

(17) a. Esta va por mi hermana y por los bailes ochenteros, nos encantan :-) [This is on my sister and the dances of the 80s, we love them :-)]. b. No me gusta, me rechifla! Me has emocionado, amiga :-) [I don’t like it, I love it! You’ve really moved me, my friend :-)].

4. Extended cyberpragmatic research

RT (and cyberpragmatics) analyses four types of communicated content. Firstly, explicit interpretations (explicatures), which differ, to a greater or lesser extent, from the meaning literally coded by the utterance. Secondly, implicated conclusions (implicatures), fully inferential and obtained from combining the explicature and further contextual information. Thirdly, feelings, emotions or impressions, of a non-propositional quality, but which the communicator intends the interlocutor to recover as part of the relevant interpretation of his/her communicative activity. An often cited example is provided in Sperber and Wilson (1995: 55), about a couple that has just arrived at the seaside. She opens the window overlooking the sea and sniffs appreciatively and ostensively. When Peter looks at her, there is no specific interpretation that comes to his attention: the air smells fresh, fresher than it did in town, it reminds him of their previous holidays, he can smell the sea, seaweed, ozone, fish; all sorts of pleasant things come to mind, and since her sniff was appreciative, he is bound to assume that she must have intended him to notice at least some of them, he is unlikely to be able to pin down her intentions any further. Finally, RT also addresses what they call weak implicatures, not overtly intended by the speaker and forming a continuum between those that the speaker weakly holds as part of his/her intentions, and others which are derived by the hearer’s sole responsibility. These four types of communicated content are obtained as part of the relevance-seeking interpretive procedure. However, the underlying assumption within RT is that information itself is relevant enough to be worth the hearer’s interpretive activity. This claim clashes with today’s tendency in Internet communication to base the relevance not in the objective value of the information transferred to other users, but in the effects that using this information -even if devoid of any informational value- produces on these users. Miller (2008) is right in pointing out that nowadays we are witnessing a shift from dialogue and communication between users on the Net, where the point of communication is to provide users with substantive content, to a situation where the maintenance of the network itself has become the primary focus, that is, communication and exchange of information subordinated to the maintenance of networks and to sustaining connected presence. This has resulted in a rise of what he calls phatic media in which communication without content has taken precedence. In other words, nowadays we witness a huge amount of Internet-mediated exchanges whose relevance does not lie in the content communicated, but in what the act of communication as a whole generates in users, providing non-propositional effects that compensate for the lack of relevance that the content inherently possesses. Indeed, we can find many instances of MIM interactions characterised by a phatic quality, filled with (apparently) irrelevant utterances if we analyse them from a purely informative point of view. But they do provide relevance in making mutually manifest assumptions such as awareness of co-presence inside the group or network of friends who are synchronously inter-connected, as well as relevance in the mutual manifestness of being present in the conversation, even if not actively participating. In MIM conversations, there is an interest in demonstrating that the user is part of the interaction, part of the collectivity, and very often, underlying the posting of photos, videos and recorded audios, there is a covert need to feel noticed and acknowledged by friends or collectivities (MIM groups). Besides, Internet communication is affected by a number of interface-related and user- related qualities that may also alter the eventual estimation of the relevance of the act of communication in terms of cognitive effects and mental effort. These are mainly related to users’ management of interface usability, the kind of relationship existing between interlocutors, etc. As a consequence of the specificity of Internet-mediated communication, in previous research an extension of cyberpragmatic research (and, in parallel, of relevance-theoretic research) has been proposed by adding two elements that play a part in the eventual relevance of Internet-mediated communication, but which are not tied to the relevance of the content being communicated (Yus 2011b, 2014b, 2014c, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c): 1. The term contextual constraint, restricted to aspects that underlie or “frame” communication and interaction (i.e. they exist prior to the interpretive activity) and constrain its eventual (un)successful outcome. 2. The term non-intended non-propositional effect, which refers to feelings, emotions, impressions, etc. which are not overtly intended, but are generated from the act of communication, and add (positively and negatively) to the cognitive effects derived from utterance interpretation or to the mental effort required for processing the utterance. This pair of terms allows us to explain why users are glued to their mobile screens while they are exchanging utterly useless messages, why some users feel frustrated upon finding it extremely difficult to manage the mobile phone interface in order to achieve their communicative goals, etc. In a sense, these added elements operate at a different level from information-centred explicatures, implicatures, etc. The latter are constrained by the communicative principle of relevance and the expectation of informative reward. By contrast, these new terms are rather constrained by the cognitive principle of relevance, since they cover aspects not directly tied to the content of what is exchanged on the Net, but nevertheless alter the estimation of relevance of the act of communication as a whole. As a consequence, the aforementioned conditions of relevance, guided by optimal balances of cognitive effects and mental effort (repeated again below as clauses (a) and (b) for convenience) should be complemented with these new cognition-related terms, as defined in (a’) and (b’), respectively. Both (a-b) and (a’-b’) should be complemented if a more accurate description of what counts as “relevant” in Internet-mediated communication is intended:

Condition a An assumption [information, in plain words] is relevant to an individual to the extent that the positive cognitive effects [its interest, in plain words] achieved when it is optimally processed are large. Condition a’ An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the non-intended non-propositional effects add to the positive cognitive effects that the information produces in a specific context (to the extent that they make the act of communication relevant even if the actual content is itself irrelevant). Condition b An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the [mental] effort required to achieve these positive cognitive effects is small. Condition b’ An assumption [information, in plain words] is relevant to an individual to the extent that the contextual constraints save (or at least do not add to) the addressee’s mental effort devoted to the processing of the information in a specific context (to the extent that they threaten the eventual relevance of the act of communication).

In the specific context of MIM communication, we can list a number of constraints and non- propositional effects specifically affecting the eventual (ir)relevance of this kind of mobile phone-mediated interaction. A preliminary classification would yield two broad types depending on whether the constraints and non-propositional effects are interface-related (user-to-system communication), or user-centred (user-to-user communication). Some of them are briefly commented upon below. All of them are bound to alter the eventual estimation of the relevance of interactions carried out through MIM interfaces. 1. Interface-related constraints. As pointed out above, these constraints, of a positive or negative quality, underlie or frame MIM communication, they exist prior to the actual act of communication, but affect the eventual relevance obtained by the user when attempting acts of communication through MIM applications. In this case, interface usability plays a major part in the eventual generation of (dis)satisfaction in the user. Mental effort will decrease if all the menus are clearly arranged, if the options for emoji use and typing conditions are satisfactory, etc. In this sense, Casaló et al. (2008) mention several factors that are related to usability, and which also apply to the use of MIM applications: (a) how easy it is to assimilate the structure of an interface, its functions, and the content; (b) how simple it is to use the interface at initial stages; (c) how fast users can find what they are searching for; (d) how easy the user feels it is to navigate the interface; and (e) to what extent can users control what they are doing and where they are at a particular stage of navigation. All of these factors have an influence in the eventual relevance of the content retrieved through the app and the kind of interactions sustained therein. Besides usability, other constraints may be listed such as familiarity with the interface, user’s task at hand and frequency of use. 2. Interface-related non-propositional effects. The quality of the interface and the options for fulfilling the user’s communicative needs generate a number of non-propositional effects. In general, the user may feel gratification if the interface serves all the communicative needs (positive effects) or impedes proper communication (negative effects). Satisfaction with the interface, feelings of enjoyment, opinion of reliability and usefulness towards the application, etc. count as possible non-propositional effects. Secondly, the user may feel that this kind of MIM-related communication is more appropriate and less “pushy” that traditional phone calls. Thirdly, if the interface allows for personalisation, the MIM user may feel isolated and special in the way the program addresses his/her preferences for communication. Concerning negative outcomes, some of the already cited limitations of text-based communication may generate misunderstandings due to the way texts are sent and displayed on the mobile phone screen (an effect which users typically try to mitigate with the use of emoticons that may produce better interpretations of plain text). Time is another constraint: if the application does not allow for a feeling of synchronicity in the way messages are displayed and replied to, the user may feel frustrated. Besides, the way notifications are personalised may generate effects regarding both privacy and interaction management. Users are often unable to process and reply to the barrage of notifications that remind the user of an in-coming message from a single user or from a group of users. 3. User-to user constraints. Communication through MIM may be constrained by a number of user-centred non- propositional elements that influence the eventual (ir)relevant outcome of communication. Two of them involve (a) the kind of relationship held between the users and (b) the user’s personality. The former may alter drastically which conversational topics are addressed, together with rules of politeness and the appropriateness of using emoji, among others. Concerning the latter, some users may shy away from interactions which exhibit too much information about themselves, for example rejecting the recording of voice messages because that level of contextualisation gives away too much information about their tone of voice or even indicates their lack of self-esteem. 4. User-to-user non-propositional effects. A cyberpragmatics of MIM communication will me more interested in the kind of non- propositional effect that is generated out of users’ interactions with other users and which adds, positively or negatively, to the (information-centred) cognitive effects, as predicted by RT. On the positive side, users get an offset of non-propositional effects from the feeling of connectedness, of group membership, of being acknowledged within the network of friends and contacts. Users feel the capacity for non-stop inter-connection and interaction, and they build rewarding social capital in the process. This kind of sustained connectivity makes up for the loss of connections that physical scenarios exhibit nowadays (Yus 2007), but at the same time serves the purpose to manage and arrange actions and events that do take place offline. Besides, the continuous exchange of information generates a more fine-grained sense of mutuality between interactants, a sort of cumulative background knowledge that can be used as preliminary context for future interactions, both online and offline. On the personal point of view, with MIM users are provided with an opportunity for self- expression and identity management, often through sustained acknowledgment from friends. Some negative non-propositional effects may also be isolated. One major source of dissatisfaction has to do with the chronemics of MIM communication. Indeed, MIM users are under constant pressure to reply to messages, and failure to do so in as short time as possible leads to negative reactions, recrimination and overall misunderstandings. An example is WhatsApp. Initially, the “person is online” status information on the user was already a source of misunderstandings, since a message sent to someone who was supposed to be online demanded immediate reply, which is not always possible (but the sender has no idea of this unavailability). Recently, the introduction of the famous “blue double check” has also triggered a number of misunderstandings. This double check is supposed to inform the user that the addressee has not only received the message, but has already read it. Then, an absent immediate reply often generates complaints from the “sender user”, but the reality is that the addressee may have indeed read the message, but there may be a myriad of reasons why he/she was unable to reply to it, information which is not mutual to both interlocutors. In general, so-called “peer pressure” is a constant source of dissatisfaction because users feel overwhelmed by the pressure to reply to all messages and as soon as possible. Small wonder, many users disable both the “user online” status information and that “blue double check” from the system. Finally, there are many unwanted non-propositional effects related to the management of feelings and emotions communicated through MIM. Even though users rely of galleries of emojis in order to try to get an interpretation not only of the propositional content but also of the feelings, emotions attached to this content, the reality is that many MIM users complain that their messages get misinterpreted, that their emotions are not clearly conveyed and that sometimes the text typed is not rich enough to manage their communicative needs effectively.

Concluding remarks

Cyberpragmatics analyses how users get messages across to one another through the Net. MIM is an ideal area of research for cyberpragmatics, since the gap between what is typed and what is intended (and eventually interpreted) requires much contextualisation. However, in order to get a realistic picture of what is really at stake regarding sender users’ communicative intentions and addressee users’ interpretations we need to enlarge the framework of analysis. The introduction of the labels contextual constraint and non-intended non-propositional effect into the overall relevance-theoretic proposal of relevance in terms of cognitive effects and mental effort may be a sound step forward in this direction.

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